Thomas Chapel

Bishop Richard Allen 1760 - 1831  

Richard Allen was one of the greatest Black religious leaders in American history.  His leadership and organizational skills were phenomenal.  Born of slave parents in 1760 in Philadelphia, Allen taught himself to read and write after having been sold to another master in Dover, Delaware.  There, with the permission of his master, he joined the Methodist Society and was soon heading the Society's meetings.  His owner's offer to allow Allen to purchase his freedom spurred Allen to work as a day laborer, brick maker, and teamster.  He worked until he had earned the 2000 Continental dollars it took to make good the offer.  Allen served as a wagon driver during the Revolutionary War and in 1786, after serving as an itinerate preacher, he returned to Philadelphia to begin his ministry.

When Allen and Rev. Absalom Jones went to Philadelphia's St. George Methodist Episcopal Church on Sunday in November 1786, a new chapter in Black History unfolded.  Allen had been organizing Black prayer meetings and encouraging greater Black attendance at St. George's.  As he told it: "when the colored people began to get numerous in attending the church, they moved us from the seats we usually sat on,...and told us to go in the gallery. The meeting had begun and...just as we got to the seats, the elder said, 'Let us pray.'  We had not been long upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking.  I raised my head up and saw one of the trustees...having hold of the Rev. Absalom Jones, pulling him up off his knees, and saying, 'You must get up--you mut not kneel here.'  Mr. Jones replied, 'Wait until the prayer is over.' "  The trustee would not wait.  Before the service ended, every Black man, woman, and child, led by Allen, walked out of the church.  It was the first mass demonstration staged by Blacks in America!  As news of the demonstration spread, Blacks in Boston, New York, and other northern cities walked out of segregated White institutions and created their own.  Five months later, in April 1787, Allen and Jones responded by creating the Free African Society.  The Society's varied features were those of a mutual aid society, a church, a political structure, and an insurance company.

Five years afterwards, its membership decided to build a church.  This decision was not immediately acted upon, because a severe yellow fever epidemic in 1793 interrupted the plan.  As others fled the city, Allen focused the Free African Society on the dreary business of recruiting Blacks to serve as nurses and undertakers.  It was thought that blacks were immune from the epidemic because few if any died from it.  Although charges of theft were later brought against Allen and Jones (Whites claimed that the two overcharged for the removal of the dead and stole valuables), Dr. Rush, Mayor Matthew Clarkson and others publicly came to their defense by proclaiming their innocence.  After the epidemic had run its course, the church building plan was resumed and on July 17, 1794, the Bethel Church, which later became the first African Methodist Episcopal (AME) congregation, was established.  Under Allen's organization and leadership, by 1816, the AME church boasted a national membership, with Allen ordained as bishop -- the first Black bishop in America.

Allen was a staunch supporter of the Anti-Slavery societies, president of the first Negro Convention, and a contributing correspondent to the first Black newspaper, Freedom's Journal.  Writing for the Journal, he eloquently opposed the American Colonization Society on the basis that "its philosophy of removal of Afro-Americans from the United States was based on racial prejudice rather than benevolence."  Yet another of Allen's major accomplishments was the organizing of the Society of Free People of Color for Promoting Instruction and School Education of Children of African Descent. 

Bishop Richard Allen died on March 26, 1831.  Throughout his life, Allen continued to press vigorously for the abolition of slavery.  He established himself as one of the giants of Black history and, indeed, of American history.  The African Methodist Episcopal Church, which he founded, is today the oldest and largest formal institution in Black America.

Sarah Allen

1764 - 1849

Missionary Sarah Allen (1764–1849) was one of the most famous and revered church women of her time, beloved for establishing the first recognized charity organization for female parishioners and honored as the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church's first female missionary. She also aided runaway slaves through the famous Underground Railroad.

While almost nothing is definitively known about Allen's origins, scholars agree that Sarah Allen was born into slavery in 1764 in Virginia's Isle of Wight with a recorded maiden name of Bass, a detail that has led some historians to speculate about her lineage, without empirical results. Allen was eight years old when she arrived as a slave in Philadelphia, but details about her life before the year 1800 seem to have been lost in the folds of history. It is known that Allen managed to acquire her freedom somehow, because she was a free woman by 1802 when she met and married Richard Allen (1760–1831), who would later become the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church's founder and first bishop.

A young Richard Allen became interested in the Methodist faith when he heard an itinerant preacher speak. He was a 17-year-old slave at the time, and found himself so moved that he chose to devote his life to the faith. Richard Allen's master was converted as well, and agreed to allow Richard to buy his freedom. The young man worked hard, freeing himself by the age of 20, and began traveling and spreading the gospel to people of all races.

The Bishop was twice married. He married his first wife, Flora, on October 19, 1790. She was a very dependable helpmate during the Bishop’s early years of establishing the church from 1787 to 1799. They attended church school and worked together purchasing land, which was eventually donated to the church or rented out to families. Flora Allen died as the result of a long illness on March 11, 1801.  The couple bore no children and the whereabouts of Flora’s remains are unknown.

Sarah Allen is described as a widow when she and Richard met, although nothing is recorded on the subject of her marital status prior to 1802. Richard met Sarah, then Sarah Bass, in Philadelphia while on a preaching circuit, and they were married within the year. The Allens had their first child a year after they were married, and three more sons and two daughters followed soon after. Their names, Richard, James, John, Peter, Sara, and Ann were the names of kings, queens and saints. Allen raised all six children, ran a tight household, managed finances, and nurtured the environment her husband required for his spiritual work.

Mrs. Allen

The devout couple made a formidable team from the start, working together to earn enough money to purchase the land and building rights for an abandoned blacksmith shop that was then relocated to Sixth and Lombard Streets in Philadelphia. They bought the old shop for thirty-five dollars, and it was pulled to its new location by a team of horses that the Allens owned. Next they sought the help of the community to convert it into a church. The new sanctuary was dedicated on July 29, 1794, and named Bethel, which means "House of God." The small church quickly grew to be an integral part of local parishioners' lives, and is affectionately referred to as "Mother Bethel" church to this day.

The modest Bethel church was soon joined by other black churches that sprang to the foreground thanks to the evangelical efforts of the Allens, including Baltimore, Salem, Wilmington, and Attleboro, Pennsylvania. These churches joined together to form the AME Church in 1816, the first independent black church in the United States. The church made Richard its first bishop, placing Sarah Allen in a unique position from which to do good. The blacksmith shop grew too small within 12 years, and it was replaced in 1805 by a roughcast structure, which was then replaced by a brick and stone church ten years after Richard Allen's death.

Do Unto Others

Sarah Allen's distinctive brand of charity made its debut during the AME church's first annual conference. The young church had struggled both financially and emotionally. The preachers had withstood excessive traveling and tireless work without any significant funding, and they returned for that first conference in terrible condition, with their clothes and belongings worn, and in poor physical condition from the difficulties of preaching on the road. Allen's biographical entry in Profiles of Negro Womanhood described how the clergy had returned "in a rather 'seedy' condition, whereupon the bishop refused to adjourn their subsequent meeting for the customary dinner at his home … After hearing her husband's explanation, [Allen] later saw for herself that the [preachers] had 'ventilators at their knees and ventilators in their elbows and ventilators in the seat of their trousers.'… [Allen] and the women of the church … [spent] an entire night in productive labor. By morning, the preachers all had new sets of clothes and were thus made presentable in appearance for carrying out their ministerial duties."

Allen's biographical entry in Notable Black American Women explained that Richard Allen initially referred to these women as the "'Dorcas Society,'" a title that "generally refers to a women's auxiliary group that is engaged in clothing and feeding the poor." The same entry also pointed out, however, that Allen's efforts in particular were "directed internally toward preparing good meals, repairing garments, and improving the appearance of AME pastors."  This care and support went on before and during each annual conference until 1827, when Allen officially identified the group as the Daughters of Conference. Once formally organized, the group expanded, and began helping the needy outside the clergy. Allen christened this far-reaching group the Women's Missionary Society, which was described in Notable Black American Women as one which maintained "a form of children's daycare school during the daytime hours, and helped organize adult classes at night to help educate their church members. They also cooked meals, mended garments, and gathered donated clothes for the needy." This focus on education for the community had served as a foundation for the Bethel church from the beginning, and remains a strong focus to the present day.

In a review in North Star of Jualynne Dodson's book Engendering Church: Women, Power, and the A.M.E. Church, Stephen W. Angell called attention to Dodson's assertion that there were three main ways women gained power in the nineteenth-century AME Church: evangelization by word of mouth, church organizations founded and attended by women, and the accumulation of resources. Angell's review also claimed that these methods for acquiring power were "employed with most effect when used quietly and unobtrusively," an apt description of the kind of life-changing work Sarah Allen did best.

When Bishop Allen died in 1831, he had provided well enough for his family that unlike most widows, Sara could afford not to seek employment. Sara Allen died on July 16, 1849 in the home of her youngest daughter, Ann. She was interred beside her husband in a tomb in the lower level of Mother Bethel Church.